Mr. Fluffington blinked once. He turned his head, but he was so stiff that the maneuver took a minute. After cradling back and forth like an upturned turtle on its shell, he managed to get upright. First he looked down at the ground beneath his four paws which consisted of black sand and black sand only. Empty desert surrounded him in all directions excluding an oily looking river not too far away. It was also black but so was the sky. Their shades of color were distinct enough so as not to blend together, and somehow it was all visible despite the fact there was no light present with which to see. There wasn’t much to see anyway, but it was better than staring into the empty abyss. The second action Mr. Fluffington took was straightening his bow tie. He was thankful that it followed him into the afterlife.

Overall, death was exactly like living except without any of the qualities that made life, life. Breathing, beating hearts, and all the other natural biological processes were optional here. Most new arrivals did it anyway because they were still used to it, but, eventually, they would adapt to their new lives, or, rather, their new deaths, and their souls would become one with the spirit world.

Mr. Fluffington waved away a floating soul that was irritating him. The wispy, white glow faded away. He wasn’t in the mood for games, having just remembered that someone murdered him―in his own home no less! If he weren’t a cat then he might have felt apathetic, even grateful maybe. Instead, he would have to go through the underworld in order to process one of his remaining nine lives. He hated the underworld. Heaven bored him but at least it was pleasantly tranquil. Hell was too hot but at least there was entertainment. The underworld, however, was a purgatory between the different afterlifes. Souls went there to wait. They went there to loiter, pass eternity, and work menial nine to fives, except for the fact that time as a concept didn’t exist in the underworld so instead they worked something like eternal graveyard shifts. It was a waste of time, a humiliation, and an extended period of time that Mr. Fluffington would have to bear through until he could murder his own murderer. He was going to find and kill them no matter what, he would make sure of it. In the meantime, however, he needed to get out.

He walked over the empty and skyless landscape and approached the river. It might as well have been empty too―a ten foot wide and endless waste of water―except that there was a small dock and a streetlamp. All too familiar with the process, he stepped onto the thick wooden boards that made up the dock and waited. The yellow glow of the light would have been a comfort in a world devoid of color if not for the thin streaks of souls swarming around it like moths to a flame, and perhaps some of them really were moths at one time. Now they were ethereal constructs, clinging on to their final memories of life. It was sad, really, except that Mr. Fluffington felt sadder for himself than anything, wasting time while waiting for the ferry.

An equivalent to ten minutes in the real world passed before the boat arrived. It was a wooden canoe. Neither it nor the oar were black, a nice change in scenery, except that its rider wore an all black, hooded robe. They were known as the Charon and their cowl covered their face in shadow. None of their skin, hair, or appendages were visible outside of their clothing. In a way, they were more ancient than time itself. They had rowed countless passengers down the Syck River, including kings, warriors, and somehow dragons. That being said, Mr. Fluffington was probably beyond their pay grade.

“I would like a one way trip to Limbo,” he said.

Ah, Fern Five Fluffington. You return again.

The words weren’t technically spoken aloud, but they materialized in his cat brain nonetheless.

“Unfortunately.”

We have been through this before, yet you have once again neglected to bring the coins.

“I had three on me but I dropped them before I died. Truthfully, I can’t be expected to bring coins with me wherever I go. It’s not like I know when I’m about to die. They’re heavy and I’m not a kangaroo; I don’t have pockets.”

You know the rules. No coin, no passage.

“But why? You don’t need the coins, do you? You sit in the boat all day, and I know for a fact that you are wearing that same robe last time.”

It is tradition. Emperors and peasants have been carrying their mortal belongings into the afterlife for millennia. Without it, they―hey, stop that.

Mr. Fluffington had climbed into the boat. It rocked back and forth on the water as he settled in at the far front.

“Thanks.”

Oh, uh, you are welcome.

The Charon swung their oar back into the water and started rowing away.

Limbo was packed with the newly dead. Whether they were trying to apply for the other afterlifes, obtain travel passes, schedule undead consultation, or just generally congregate around, souls and physical bodies in the process of turning into souls covered the area. Mr. Fluffington thanked the Charon, promised to pay them next time, and then darted through the crowds. He worked with the philosophy that the quicker he got into a line, the faster he would be out of the underworld. Unfortunately, this meant he would have to navigate through undead hordes of liches, ghosts, skeletal horses, and, worst of all, other normal looking animals. Most of them tried initiating conversations or nodding if they could, as if once being a living, breathing animal was something to bond over. He ignored them all.

The empty deserts continued throughout Limbo, but there were at least a few tents, posts, and even a few buildings. The largest structure of them all was the Department of Mortem Visits. It was a rectangular shaped building with about as much color as the surrounding sand and about as much imagination as the sky. A line of souls went out its door and wrapped around the building. Mr. Fluffington promptly found the end and started the waiting game. If time existed there, hours would have passed by. The line slowly dwindled at what seemed like a soul every fifteen minutes. By the time he reached the door, he wanted to tear out someone’s eyes. It did not help that upon trying to enter, the worker at the front—a green spirit wisp without eyes—stopped him.

“ID?” The spirit essence pulsated when it spoke, but the words came out in a regular monotone male voice. It sounded like it was probably a ferret in its previous life.

“Does it look like I have an ID?” The grumpy dead cat had had enough by that point but also a point long before that.

“Without one you can’t enter I’m afraid.”

“Afraid? Really? You are afraid because I can’t enter? I’m going to say something and correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you care at all if I enter or not.”

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“Well, no, I was just trying to be polite,” said the spirit. “But seriously, you need an ID.”

“I’ve been here before,” said Mr. Fluffington, but because the spirit obviously didn’t care, he added, “Where am I supposed to get an ID? You’d think you’d put the requirements to get in at the start of the line.”

“It takes five minutes, just fill out the form online.”

They stared at each other for several seconds as Mr. Fluffington tried processing what the spirit had said.

“On-line? Huh? No, I’m not doing that stupid stuff. Look, I was here two months ago after accidentally ingesting rat poison. They let me in without an ID, so if I were you I’d do the same.”

“Sir, you need an—”

Mr. Fluffington extended his paw and swiped at the spirit, removing it at the spot. There were a series of gasps behind him. A big silence followed that a certain spirit worker no longer existed to fill, but nothing happened because there weren’t laws for murder in the underworld. You couldn’t kill what was already dead. There also wasn’t any law enforcement around, at least not currently.

Without further ado or any other interruptions, Mr. Fluffington entered the Department of Mortem Visits.

There was another line.

The room was packed full of the dead. Any seating in the middle of the room was taken. The low ceiling had a set of fluorescent light panels that casted everything in a droll yellow glow. And, yes, there was another line. The thought bounced around his head. Despite the fact there were a total of ten different desks, all of them were busy. Impatience, irritation, and boredom festered in the air. It spread throughout the lines, causing the waiting spirits and undead animals to argue, bicker, groan, and whine. It permeated the only air the workers ever knew. None of them argued back, but it was clear they wanted to. The spirits at the desks moved with a careful precision, attending to animals at the same speed Ms. Hating the tortoise, Mr. Fluffington’s old neighbor, used to trim the grass in her lawn daily. It had a total of ten blades.

“Oh, Fern, it is so nice to see you again!”

Mr. Fluffington froze and turned slowly to the voice beckoning him from somewhere in the midsts of the seated waiting area.

“Uh, Ms. Hating, hi,” he said.

She died at a hundred and twenty-two years old when the life expectancy for the average Forest animal was maybe ten, or one of you included the mayflies and fruit flies. Somehow, she looked older now. Her mortal coil, including her shell, was gone. Now she was a transparent, floating, and colorless depiction of a tortoise.

“What a lovely time, yes, yes,” she said. “I never got to thank you for arranging my funeral. I loved the tulips you brought.”

Mr. Fluffington edged forward in line, hoping to hurry as soon as possible. He had, in fact, been the only animal to attend her funeral. The tulips he found were reused from the funeral ceremony he set up for Brick, a skunk that died two days prior. His funeral at least had some attendance.

“Uh, nice talking to you, I must go now,” he told Ms. Hating.

“Certainly. You be good, you,” she said, but he was already inching as forward through the line as possible.

He accidentally bumped into the ghoul standing in front of him. It turned around.

“Ohhh, Flufffy, heyyyyyyyy. Thaaaanks fooooor heeeelping meeee wiiiith theeee leeaaaky taaaaap faaaacet wheeen weeee weeeere aliiiive.”

It ended up being a miserable, long wait.

By the time Mr. Fluffington reached the front desk, his mind was filled to the brim with thoughts of death, torment, despair, and fish—some desires not even the afterlife can quench. He was the only animal in all the world and underworld to resent gratitude, and for some reason he occupied the only job in the world that raked in more gratitude than money. It made no sense, but it was alright because he was finally at the end. Or so he thought.

“ID?” said the fleshless skeleton sitting behind the counter.

The gray cat was a fraction of the skeleton’s height and size, but it didn’t matter as he opened his mouth and screeched at the top of its lungs, “I DON’T HAVE ONE!”

The other nine workers, all the souls in line, and all the undead waiters in the seated area stopped at once. The sound of infuriated voices, pressing stamps, and shuffling paper ceased to give way for silence. As one, they stared at Mr. Fluffington. He breathed so heavily that his whole body heaved up and down. He stretched on all four legs so that it looked like he was tiptoeing. His back arched and every single one of his fangs faced the animated skeleton.

“Oh, Fluffington, it’s you,” said the skeleton jovially—what they were a skeleton of, no one knew. Their mouth was a stretched grin, except it could only ever be a grin because they were a skeleton.

All at once, the room resumed movement. A susurration of whispers returned, kicked up into the usual chatter, and all business continued as if nothing happened.

“Are you applying for a visa to Heaven? Or perhaps…?”

The two stared at each other. Mr. Fluffington was the only animal that could outstare a skeleton.

“I—am—using—one—of—my—lives,” he said. The intentional space between each word let an edgy silence fill in the gaps. His words scraped together, sounding altogether more abrasive than the skeleton which had to grind and clatter its teeth to produce words.

“Yes, of course. Here is your Nine Life slip, I think we have your record in our files, let me check really quickly... Aha, there we go, and—”

The worker froze in place. They had no expression with which to emote or eyes with which to glance, but they said nothing as they held a small white rectangular slip in their bony clutches.

“Problem?” said Mr. Fluffington.

“No… no, none at all. Here is your slip, the Altar is in the room behind me. Umm, have a nice life, sir.”

“You too,” said the cat, taking the slip and slipping by the skeleton's desk.

No one was normally allowed behind the desks unless you were accessing the Altar room behind them. Cats, notorious for going wherever they pleased, were the only species wide group allowed in. It was where they went to use up their nine lives and return to the land of the living. Mr. Fluffington was well aware of the process as he had gone through it an unfortunate number of times. Nevertheless, once you got passed the Department of Mortem Visits, you were essentially at the end.

The Altar room was big enough to fit at most an elephant, the largest non-dragon animal. There was a red chalk outline on the floor drawn up into what was supposed to be a pentacle, but someone had drawn two points too many and so it was instead a ‘heptacle’. There were dribbly wax candles set about that never went out. There were also a few primate skulls strewn around the room.

All in all, it was a nice change of scenery from the room he had spent hours waiting in before that. Mr. Fluffington felt relieved to step into the center of the Altar and begin the conversion between worlds. But more than that, he felt wrath building up inside him. Someone out there in the real world had subjected him to what was technically an eternity of waiting. They had killed him in his own home, in his own bed, while he was trying to sleep. When he got back, he swore he was going to find them, kill them, and make sure they never returned to the land of the living.

Light filled his vision, initiating the process. His fur stuck up as though wind were passing through from out of the ground. His bow tie twitched. The slip in his hand, the only item that wouldn’t move with him to the living plane, remained idle.

His mind grew fuzzy and most memories involving the underworld slipped out into a temporary storage only accessed when returning back one inevitable day. An observer would’ve seen Mr. Fluffington flickering in and out of reality as he disappeared and reappeared every second or so.

The whole time, he could only think singular, sluggish thoughts. The main one on his mind was revenge against the bastard that sent him down there in the first place. It was a terrible waste of a monday and a tragic waste of his twelfth life.

One moment he was there, the next moment he was not. The only reminder that a Mr. Fluffington had ever existed in the underworld was the little slip of paper that had since fallen to the ground.

It read: “Fern Five Fluffington” at the top. At the bottom, there were nine little, brightly colored stamps neatly fit into their respective squares. Under those were an extra four stamps hurriedly squeezed in with a dark, black ink.